path: root/docs/html/google/play/billing/billing_subscriptions.jd

page.title=Subscriptions
parent.title=In-app Billing
parent.link=index.html
@jd:body

<!--notice block -->
    <div style="background-color:#fffbd9;width:100%;margin-bottom:1em;padding:8px 8px 1px;">
      <p><em>15 February 2013</em></p>
      <p>In-app Billing V3 now supports subscriptions and you can get
        started developing today. A small app update is currently being
        rolled out to Android devices. This process is automatic and
        most devices will get the update in the next few days. However,
        if you wish to get the update today to start developing right
        away, simply reboot your device. </p>

      <p>However, we recommend that you <em>do not publish</em> an app with 
        V3 subscriptions until all Android devices have received the update. We'll
        notify you here that all devices have received the update and its safe
        to publish your apps that use V3 subscriptions. </p>
    </div>

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     wrapper when notice is removed. -->
<!--<div id="qv-wrapper"> -->
<div id="qv-wrapper" style="margin-top:.25em;">
<div id="qv">
  <h2>Quickview</h2>
  <ul>
     <li>Users purchase your subscriptions from inside your apps, rather than 
directly from Google Play.</li>
     <li>Subscriptions let you sell products with automated, recurring billing
(monthly or annual).</li>
     <li>You can offer a configurable trial period for any subscription.</li>

  </ul>
  <h2>In this document</h2>
  <ol>
    <li><a href="#overview">Overview</a></li>
    <li><a href="#administering">Configuring Subscriptions Items</a></li>
    <li><a href="#cancellation">Cancellation</a></li>
    <li><a href="#payment">Payment Processing</a></li>
    <li><a href="#play-dev-api">Google Play Android Developer API</a></li>
  </ol>
  <h2>See also</h2>
  <ol>
    <li><a href="{@docRoot}google/play/billing/billing_integrate.html#Subs">Implementing Subscriptions (V3)</a></li>
  </ol>
</div>
</div>

<p>Subscriptions let you sell content, services, or features in your app with
automated, recurring billing. You can easily adapt an existing In-app Billing 
implementation to sell subscriptions.</p>
<p>This document is focused on highlighting implementation details that are 
specific to subscriptions, along with some strategies for the associated billing 
and business models.</p>

<h2 id="overview">Overview of Subscriptions</h2>
<p>A <em>subscription</em> is a product type offered in In-app Billing that 
lets you sell content, services, or features to users from inside your app with 
recurring monthly or annual billing. You can sell subscriptions to almost any 
type of digital content, from any type of app or game.</p>

<p>As with other in-app products, you configure and publish subscriptions using
the Developer Console and then sell them from inside apps installed on 
Android devices. In the Developer console, you create subscription
products and add them to a product list, then set a price and optional trial
period for each, choose a billing interval (monthly or annual), and then 
publish. For more information about using the Developer Console, see 
<a href="#administering">Configuring Subscription Items</a>.</p>

<p>When users purchase subscriptions in your apps, Google Play handles all 
checkout details so your apps never have to directly process any financial 
transactions. Google Play processes all payments for subscriptions through 
Google Checkout, just as it does for standard in-app products and app purchases. 
This ensures a consistent and familiar purchase flow for your users.</p>

<img src="{@docRoot}images/in-app-billing/v3/billing_subscription_v3.png" style="float:right; border:4px solid ddd;">

<p>After users have purchase subscriptions, they can view the subscriptions and 
cancel them from the <strong>My Apps</strong> screen in the Play Store app or 
from the app's product details page in the Play Store app. For more information 
about handling user cancellations, see <a href="#cancellation">Subscription Cancellation</a>.</p>

<p>In adddition to client-side API calls, you can use the server-side API for 
In-app Billing to provide subscription purchasers with extended access to 
content (for example, from your web site or another service).
The server-side API lets you validate the status of a subscription when users
sign into your other services. For more information about the API, see <a
href="#play-dev-api">Google Play Android Developer API</a>. </p>

<p>You can also build on your existing external subscriber base from inside your
Android apps.</p>
<ul>
<li>If you sell subscriptions on a web site, for example, you can add
your own business logic to your Android app to determine whether the user has
already purchased a subscription elsewhere, then allow access to your content if
so or offer a subscription purchase from Google Play if not.</li>
<li>You can implement your own solution for sharing subscriptions across as 
many different apps or products as you want. For example, you could sell a 
subscription that gives a subscriber access to an entire collection of apps, 
games, or other content for a monthly or annual fee. To implement this solution, 
you could add your own business logic to your app to determine whether the user 
has already purchased a given subscription and if so, allow access to your 
content.</li>
</ul>
</p>

<p>In general the same basic policies and terms apply to subscriptions as to
standard in-app products, however there are some differences. For complete
information about the current policies and terms, please read the <a
href="http://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en
&answer=140504">policies document</a>.</p>

<p>To learn about the minimum system requirements for 
subscriptions, see the <a href="{@docRoot}google/play/billing/versions.html#Subs">Version Notes</a>.</p>

<h2 id="administering">Configuring Subscription Items</h2>
<p>To create and manage subscriptions, use the Developer Console to set up a 
product list for the app then configure these attributes for each subscription 
product:</p>

<ul>
<li>Purchase Type: always set to <strong>Subscription</strong></li>
<li>Subscription ID:  An identifier for the subscription</li>
<li>Publishing State: Unpublished/Published</li>
<li>Language: The default language for displaying the subscription</li>
<li>Title: The title of the subscription product</li>
<li>Description: Details that tell the user about the subscription</li>
<li>Price: USD price of subscription per recurrence</li>
<li>Recurrence: monthly or yearly</li>
<li>Additional currency pricing (can be auto-filled)</li>
</ul>

<p>For details on how to add and configure products in the Developer Console, 
see <a href="{@docRoot}google/play/billing/billing_admin.html">Administering
In-app Billing</a>.</p>

<h3 id="pricing">Subscription pricing</h3>

<p>When you create a subscription in the Developer Console, you can set a price
for it in any available currencies. Each subscription must have a non-zero
price. You can price multiple subscriptions for the same content differently
&mdash; for example you could offer a discount on an annual subscription
relative to the monthly equivalent. </p>

<p class="caution"><strong>Important</strong>: To change the price of a 
subscription, you can publish a new subscription product ID at a new price, 
then offer it in your app instead of the original product. Users who have 
already purchased will continue to be charged at the 
original price, but new users will be charged at the new price.</p>

<h3 id="user-billing">User billing</h3>

<p>In the Developer Console, you can configure subscription products with 
automated recurring billing at either of two intervals:</p>

<ul>
  <li>Monthly &mdash; Google Play bills the customer’s Google Checkout account at
  the time of purchase and monthly subsequent to the purchase date (exact billing
  intervals can vary slightly over time)</li>
  <li>Annually &mdash; Google Play bills the customer's Google Checkout account at
  the time of purchase and again on the same date in subsequent years.</li>
</ul>

<p>Billing continues indefinitely at the interval and price specified for the
subscription. At each subscription renewal, Google Play charges the user account
automatically, then notifies the user of the charges afterward by email. Billing
cycles will always match subscription cycles, based on the purchase date.</p>

<p>Over the life of a subscription, the form of payment billed remains the same
&mdash; Google Play always bills the same form of payment (such as credit card
or by Direct Carrier Billing) that was originally used to purchase the
subscription.</p>

<p>When the subscription payment is approved by Google Checkout, Google Play
provides a purchase token back to the purchasing app through the In-app Billing
API. Your apps can store the token locally or pass it to your backend servers, 
which can then use it to validate or cancel the subscription remotely using the <a
href="#play-dev-api">Google Play Android Developer API</a>.</p>

<p>If a recurring payment fails (for example, because the customer’s credit
card has become invalid), the subscription does not renew. How your app is 
notified depends on the In-app Billing API version that you are using:</p>
<ul>
<li>With In-app Billing Version 3, the failed or expired subscription is no longer 
returned when you call {@code getPurchases}.</li>
<li>With In-app Billing Version 2, Google Play notifies your app at the end of 
the active cycle that the purchase state of the subscription is now "Expired". 
</li>
</ul>

<p class="note"><strong>Recommendation</strong>: Include business logic in your 
app to notify your backend servers of subscription purchases, tokens, and any 
billing errors that may occur. Your backend servers can use the server-side API 
to query and update your records and follow up with customers directly, if needed.</p>

<h3 id="trials">Free trials</h3>

<p>In the Developer Console, you can set up a free trial period that lets users
try your subscription content before buying it. The trial period runs for the 
period of time that you set and then automatically converts to a full 
subscription managed according to the subscription's billing interval and 
price.</p>

<p>To take advantage of a free trial, a user must "purchase" the full
subscription through the standard In-app Billing flow, providing a valid form of
payment to use for billing and completing the normal purchase transaction.
However, the user is not charged any money, since the initial period corresponds
to the free trial. Instead, Google Play records a transaction of $0.00 and the
subscription is marked as purchased for the duration of the trial period or
until cancellation. When the transaction is complete, Google Play notifies users
by email that they have purchased a subscription that includes a free trial
period and that the initial charge was $0.00. </p>

<p>When the trial period ends, Google Play automatically initiates billing
against the credit card that the user provided during the initial purchase, at 
the amount set
for the full subscription, and continuing at the subscription interval. If
necessary, the user can cancel the subscription at any time during the trial
period. In this case, Google Play <em>marks the subscription as expired immediately</em>,
rather than waiting until the end of the trial period. The user has not
paid for the trial period and so is not entitled to continued access after
cancellation.</p>

<p>You can set up a trial period for a subscription in the Developer Console,
without needing to modify or update your APK. Just locate and edit the
subscription in your product list, set a valid number of days for the trial
(must be 7 days or longer), and publish. You can change the period any time,
although note that Google Play does not apply the change to users who have
already "purchased" a trial period for the subscription. Only new subscription
purchases will use the updated trial period. You can create one free trial
period per subscription product.</p>

<h3 id="publishing">Subscription publishing</h3>
<p>When you have finished configuring your subscription product details in the
Developer Console, you can publish the subscription in the app product list.</p>

<p>In the product list, you can add subscriptions, in-app products, or both. You
can add multiple subscriptions that give access to different content or
services, or you can add multiple subscriptions that give access to the same
content but for different intervals or different prices, such as for a
promotion. For example, a news outlet might decide to offer both monthly and
annual subscriptions to the same content, with annual having a discount. You can
also offer in-app purchase equivalents for subscription products, to ensure that
your content is available to users of older devices that do not support
subscriptions.</p>

<p>After you add a subscription or in-app product to the product list, you must
publish the product before Google Play can make it available for purchase. Note
that you must also publish the app itself before Google Play will make the
products available for purchase inside the app. </p>

<p class="caution"><strong>Important</strong>: You can remove the subscription 
product from the product list offered in your app to prevent users from seeing 
or purchasing it.</p>

<h2 id="cancellation">Subscription Cancellation</h2>

<p>Users can view the status of all of their subscriptions and cancel them if
necessary from the <strong>My Apps</strong> screen in the Play Store app. 
Currently, the In-app Billing API does not provide support for programatically 
canceling subscriptions from inside the purchasing app.</p>

<p>When the user cancels a subscription, Google Play does not offer a refund for
the current billing cycle. Instead, it allows the user to have access to the
cancelled subscription until the end of the current billing cycle, at which time
it terminates the subscription. For example, if a user purchases a monthly
subscription and cancels it on the 15th day of the cycle, Google Play will
consider the subscription valid until the end of the 30th day (or other day,
depending on the month).</p>

<p>In some cases, the user may contact you directly to request cancellation of a
subscription. In this and similar cases, you can use the server-side API to
query and directly cancel the user’s subscription from your servers.

<p class="caution"><strong>Important:</strong> In all cases, you must continue
to offer the content that your subscribers have purchased through their
subscriptions, for as long any users are able to access it. That is, you must
not remove any subscriber’s content while any user still has an active
subscription to it, even if that subscription will terminate at the end of the
current billing cycle. Removing content that a subscriber is entitled to access
will result in penalties. Please see the <a
href="http://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=140504">policies document</a> for more information. </p>

<h3 id="uninstall">App uninstallation</h3>

<p>When the user uninstalls an app that includes purchased subscriptions, the 
Play Store app will notify the user that there are active subscriptions. If the 
user chooses to continue with the uninstallation, the app is removed and the 
subscriptions remain active and recurring billing continues. The user can return 
to cancel the associated subscriptions at any time in the <strong>My Apps</strong> 
screen of the Play Store app. If the user chooses to cancel the uninstallation, 
the app and subscriptions remain as they were.</p>

<h3 id="refunds">Refunds</h3>

<p>With subscriptions, Google Play does not provide a refund window, so users 
will need to contact you directly to request a refund.

<p>If you receive requests for refunds, you can use the server-side API to
cancel the subscription or verify that it is already cancelled. However, keep in
mind that Google Play considers cancelled subscriptions valid until the end of
their current billing cycles, so even if you grant a refund and cancel the
subscription, the user will still have access to the content.

<p class="caution"><strong>Important:</strong> Partial refunds for canceled
subscriptions are not available at this time.</p>

<h2 id="payment">Payment Processing and Policies</h2>

<p>In general, the terms of Google Play allow you to sell in-app subscriptions
only through the standard payment processor, Google Checkout. For purchases of 
any subscription products, the transaction fee is the same as the transaction 
fee for application purchases (30%).</p>

<p>Apps published on Google Play that are selling subscriptions must use In-app
Billing to handle the transaction and may not provide links to a purchase flow
outside of the app and Google Play (such as to a web site).</p>

<p>For complete details about terms and policies, see the <a
href="http://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=140504">policies
document</a>.</p>

<h3 id="orderId">Subscription order numbers</h3>

<p>To help you track transactions relating to a given subscription, Google
Checkout provides a base Merchant Order Number for all recurrences of the 
subscription and denotes
each recurring transaction by appending an integer as follows: </p>

<p><span style="color:#777"><code style="color:#777">12999556515565155651.5565135565155651</code> (base order number)</span><br />
<code>12999556515565155651.5565135565155651..0</code> (initial purchase orderID)<br />
<code>12999556515565155651.5565135565155651..1</code> (first recurrence orderID)<br />
<code>12999556515565155651.5565135565155651..2</code> (second recurrence orderID)<br />
...<br /></p>

<p>Google Play provides the order number as the value of the 
{@code orderId} field of the {@code INAPP_PURCHASE_DATA} JSON field (in V3) 
or the {@code PURCHASE_STATE_CHANGED} intent (in V2).</p>

<h2 id="play-dev-api">Google Play Android Developer API</h2>

<p>Google Play offers an HTTP-based API that you can use to remotely query the
validity of a specific subscription at any time or cancel a subscription. The
API is designed to be used from your backend servers as a way of securely
managing subscriptions, as well as extending and integrating subscriptions with
other services.</p>

<h3 id="using">Using the API</h3>

<p>To use the API, you must first register a project at the <a
href="https://code.google.com/apis/console">Google APIs Console</a> and receive
a Client ID and shared secret that  your app will present when calling the
Google Play Android Developer API. All calls to the API are authenticated with
OAuth 2.0.</p>

<p>Once your app is registered, you can access the API directly, using standard
HTTP methods to retrieve and manipulate resources, or you can use the Google
APIs Client Libraries, which are extended to support the API.</p>

<p>The Google Play Android Developer API is built on a RESTful design that uses
HTTP and JSON, so any standard web stack can send requests and parse the
responses. However, if you don’t want to send HTTP requests and parse responses
manually, you can access the API using the client libraries, which provide
better language integration, improved security, and support for making calls
that require user authorization.</p>

<p>For more information about the API and how to access it through the Google
APIs Client Libraries, see the documentation at:</p> 

<p style="margin-left:1.5em;"><a
href="https://developers.google.com/android-publisher/v1/">https://developers.
google.com/android-publisher/v1/</a></p>

<h3 id="quota">Quota</h3>

<p>Applications using the Google Play Android Developer API are limited to an
initial courtesy usage quota of <strong>15000 requests per day</strong> (per
application). This should provide enough access for normal
subscription-validation needs, assuming that you follow the recommendation in
this section.</p>

<p>If you need to request a higher limit for your application, please use the
“Request more” link in the <a
href="https://code.google.com/apis/console/#:quotas">Google APIs Console</a>.
Also, please read the section below on design best practices for minimizing your
use of the API.</p>

<h3 id="auth">Authorization</h3>

<p>Calls to the Google Play Android Developer API require authorization. Google
uses the OAuth 2.0 protocol to allow authorized applications to access user
data. To learn more, see <a
href="https://developers.google.com/android-publisher/authorization">Authorization</a>
in the Google Play Android Developer API documentation.</p>

<h3 id="practices">Using the API efficiently</h3>

<p>Access to the Google Play Android Developer API is regulated to help ensure a
high-performance environment for all applications that use it. While you can
request a higher daily quota for your application, we highly recommend that you
minimize your access using the technique(s) below. </p>

<ul>
  <li><em>Store subscription expiry on your servers</em> &mdash; your servers
  should use the Google Play Android Developer API to query the expiration date
  for new subscription tokens, then store the expiration date locally. This allows
  you to check the status of subscriptions only at or after the expiration (see
  below). </li>
  <li><em>Cache expiration and purchaseState</em> &mdash; If your app contacts
  your backend servers at runtime to verify subscription validity, your server
  should cache the expiration and purchaseState to ensure the fastest possible
  response (and best experience) for the user.</li>
  <li><em>Query for subscription status only at expiration</em> &mdash; Once your
  server has retrieved the expiration date of subscription tokens, it should not
  query the Google Play servers for the subscription status again until the
  subscription is reaching or has passed the expiration date. Typically, your
  servers would run a batch query each day to check the status of
  <em>expiring</em> subscriptions, then update the database. Note that: 
  <ul>
    <li>Your servers should not query all subscriptions every day</li>
    <li>Your servers should never query subscription status dynamically, based on
    individual requests from your Android application. </li>
  </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

<p>By following those general guidelines, your implementation will offer the
best possible performance for users and minimize use of the Google Play Android
Developer API.</p>